The Yum Yum Factor

This Peruvian inspired shrimp is currently one of my most requested dishes and by most requested, I mean that people basically command me to make this for dinner when they come over. The aji sauce is usually served with rotisserie chicken but I like with everything from french fries or roasted potatoes to fish. The herb marinated shrimp cooked in lots of butter puts this rich sauce right over the edge and the drizzle of crema de rocoto complements all that richness with a hit of acidic heat.  The sauce is totally addictive,  the dish looks way harder to make than it was to make which is always a plus and it's a really great introduction to some fabulous Peruvian ingredients like aji amarillo paste, made from a yellow pepper only found in Peru (medium to slightly hot) and rocoto , another paste made from a hot, red chili pepper grown mainly in the Andes from Chile to Columbia. Peruvian Shrimp with Aji Verde Sauce 4 servings marinade : 1/4 cup f...

I love a challenge. I was asked by MSC (the Marine Stewardship Council) to throw a little #OceanToPlate dinner for friends using MSC certified seafood and because that felt too easy, I chose to invite my friend who claims to hate seafood. To add to the challenge, she and her husband are on a restrictive diet at the moment and so they couldn't have rice, potatoes, beets, or pasta which are all my usual suspects when I am feeding them.

When we were in Portugal, we ate some version of octopus salad everywhere we went. Some had tomato and onion, some were just bowls of chopped octopus, doused with copious amounts of olive oil, vinegar and herbs and others were brightened with lots of cilantro and lemon juice. I don't think I could even pick a favourite if I tried, but, if you put a gun to my head, I might say that it was the octopus salad we ate at Ponto Finale (check that meal out here  ). When I don't have the time or inclination to cook and prepare my own octopus, I buy a few chunks of cooked octopus in olive oil from my favourite little Italian grocery store and use that. This is a typical dinner for The Kid and I when we are on our own - just add some crusty bread and a green salad (and a frosty glass of rose for me) and you have got yourself the perfect summer meal and you never had to turn on a stove or do anything more strenuous than chop a tomato. Although I do love it with cilantro, for a ch...

Because salt cod and I have a bit of a contentious relationship, I kind of assumed that I would have a hard time eating in Portugal because bacalhau (the portuguese word for salt cod) seems to be in every dish they make. It is said that there are over 1000 traditional Portuguese bacalhau recipes and I believe that might be an understatement. You can have it in stews, in fritters, in cakes, deep fried, grilled or braised. It's almost always cooked or served with potatoes, as is everything else there to be honest, and despite my initial feelings of distaste for this noble beast , I was certainly willing to try it before announcing that I still hated it. I am nothing if not opened minded. Bacalhau is to Portuguese cuisine what tomatoes are to Italian, despite the fact that they have to import it from Newfoundland, Norway or Iceland because cod is not native to their waters. Oddly enough, it's also the one fish that they never eat in it's fresh state. Once an inexpensive k...

We have returned from a fabulous 10 day trip to Portugal and, to be honest, I have just started to come back to reality and still feel like I am still processing the experience. I am pretty sure I could write a bazillion word essay on the wonders of Portugal at this point but who really wants me to do that? Until I can access my internal editor, I am holding off on even touching the actual events of the trip so that I don't bore you all to tears and scare you away because I really do want to share the wonders of this little gem of a country.

It was the The Kid's 15th birthday and I think I have made it pretty clear that when somebody celebrates a birthday in this house, it's allllll about days of eating whatever the birthday person wants to eat. From our Saturday dim sum feast at Luckee, through to his Saturday night, adult free, all you can eat sushi dinner with a group of his friends all the way to the actual birthday dinner, The Kid got to eat whatever his little heart desired. It also so happens that Easter fell the day before his birthday this year, so a turkey dinner was thrown in there for good measure. At first, he just requested risotto with either pumpkin pie or a raspberry pie. I got a pumpkin pie for Easter dinner and he was the only one to eat it so the same pie was going to have to do as his birthday dessert and he was A Okay with that but I couldn't pin him down as far as kind of risotto. He said "just plain risotto" I am NOT making a big bowl of plain risotto for his birthd...

I love how a dish will take off in the blogosphere and suddenly you wake one morning and everyone but you is making cake pops or boozy popsicles. This seems to be happening with this one pot pasta technique. Martha Stewart featured this simple pasta dish  this month and, once again, she has inspired the masses to go out and throw raw pasta with other stuff in a pot and just throw caution to the wind and do something that kind of goes against everything we all believe about cooking pasta. I was a bit leery but then, the more I thought about it, it made sense. We use the starchy pasta water all the time to not only thin out sauces but to utilize the starch to make the sauce more cohesive and silky. It kind of serves as a binder so this could actually work and if it DOES actually work , it could revolutionize week night dinner. If we all know we can just throw all the crap we have sitting in the fridge in one pot and 10 or 12 minutes later we will have a complete, healthy din...

We are still Shackless as it seems like his movie is never going to end and he is never coming home from Montreal. The only thing we can do to stop ourselves from crying ourselves to sleep every night is to continue to dine on the creatures of the sea. It is our cross to bear. I was actually not planning to make salmon at all today (I was going to whip up some chili nachos) but then I went to the store for mustard and ended up buying a nice piece of salmon instead. It wasn't quite enough to serve the two of us so I needed to stretch it a bit. I toyed with the idea of making a salmon risotto or pasta or something but nothing was grabbing me. Time for salmon cakes. I often make extra salmon just I can make cakes the next day but this was the first time I cooked salmon just for that purpose. Because I have been craving Indian food for a week, tandoori salmon cakes were now on the menu. As is often the case, I have made them before but I have never really paid attenti...

MMMMMM mussels. They are so cheap, so easy and so delicious that anyone who enjoys eating them but never makes them is insane. You can make a giant pot of mussels, cut up a loaf of some kind of good, crusty bread, maybe make a salad and you have dinner on the table in ten minutes for under $10. Sometimes it's fun to get fancy pants and do all sorts of exotic thai lemongrass or Indian spiced mussels to be sure, but for The Kid, it's always classic,  straight up white wine, garlic and buttery tomatoes. Bottom line is that there is no excuse to not make them so don't be a crazy person. Go and buy yourself a bag of mussels and get cracking. Mussels in White Wine serves 2 as a main course or 3 or 4 as an appetizer 2 lb mussels 3 tbls butter 3 shallots, chopped 2 cloves garlic, chopped pinch chili flakes 2 large plum tomatoes, chopped 1/2 cup white wine 1 cup chopped italian parsley 1/2 cup chopped basil Cook the onion, chili flake  and garlic in the b...

We had our Father's Day manly meal on Saturday, complete with grilled skirt steak and all of Shack's favourites like grilled corn, asparagus and coleslaw so that we could go over to Jen's for some tacos and cocktails. My contribution to the festivities was ceviche and because I couldn't decide between the halibut and the scallops, I bought both. We scored these beautiful, huge local radishes at St Lawrence Market and I knew they would be perfect in a ceviche. Kind of peppery, crunchy, watery and crisp - since I never put fresh chili peppers in my ceviche so that Little Shack will be able to enjoy it, radishes will give it a nice spicy kick without making it hot. I have never met a ceviche I didn't like and I really liked this one a lot. Scallibut Ceviche 1/2 lb fresh halibut 1/3 lb fresh scallops juice of 4 or 5 limes 1 clove garlic 1 tomato , fine dice 1/2 small red onion or vidalia onion, fine dice big handful of cilantro, washed and chopped 3 l...